After Their Vows (8 page)

But when she looked at his face she could see the polite shutters were still in place, joined now by a grim purpose that put Angie warily on her guard as he strode up to her, then held out his hand.

Her eyelashes flickering slightly, she studied his closed features for a second, then looked down to see he was holding out his mobile phone.

‘Take it,’ he instructed.

Not understanding why she needed to, Angie moistened lips and did nothing.

‘It is your brother,’ he said. ‘I managed to catch him between stopovers.’

It was ironic that he should do this now, when the last person she wanted to think about was Alex.

‘Roque—’ she said with a husky jerk, wanting— needing—to say something to him but with no clue as to what the something was.

The grim set of Roque’s mouth moved in a tense twitch as he took hold of her hand and placed the phone in it, then turned and strode away again, crossing the room to disappear into the other dressing room. Angie followed his tall, straight, purposeful stride through slightly blurred and helplessly confused swimming eyes.

‘Are you there, Angie?’

It was only as her brother’s impatient voice arrived in her ear that she realised she’d lifted the phone to it. ‘Y-yes,’ she confirmed, blinking fast. ‘I’m here. Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m all right,’ Alex responded. ‘What do you think I am—a baby? ‘

Yes, thought Angie. ‘No, but …’

‘I can’t tell you how great all of this is,’ he rushed on excitedly. ‘I’m flying first class—’

‘Wh-where are you?’ Angie asked him.

‘Hell, I don’t know.’ He didn’t sound as if he cared. ‘Some VIP transit lounge somewhere. I didn’t register where. We stopped to refuel. Did you know you can have a shower and a massage while you wait in these places? Just great how the other half live.’

‘But—what about your studies, Alex? You can’t just—’

‘Oh, blow my studies,’ he dismissed with absolute indifference. ‘I can return to them any time. This is just the very best thing that’s ever happened to me, Angie. Roque’s been amazing. Who would’ve thought it of the guy? Did he tell you I’m going to ride with real gauchos and learn to rope cattle and stuff? I feel really guilty now for being such a bastard to him.’

The line crackled, and Angie heard her brother mutter something. ‘I didn’t catch that,’ she said, squeezing the phone closer to her ear.

‘I’ve got to go. We’re being called to board. Listen to me, Angie,’ he went on quickly, ‘I’m sorry I messed everything up for you two.’

‘You didn’t—’

‘Of course I did,’ Alex sighed out. ‘I meant to do it! I was so jealous of him I wanted to split the two of you up. But taking that money was way too low. I’m lucky I’ve still got my head attached to my neck.’

‘Alex—’

‘I just want to say I love you, sis, but it’s time I started taking responsibility for myself.’ The line crackled again, and kept on crackling. ‘I’m fine …’ she thought
she heard between the crackles. ‘Do yourself a favour … Roque …’

‘Alex—?’

The crackles stopped and the line was dead. Angie stood there, staring at the phone clutched in her tense fingers. Her brother was enjoying himself. He was excited. And suddenly Roque had gone from being his most hated enemy to his absolute very best friend. He didn’t mind being shipped off to the other end of the world, away from her. In fact he sounded happy to be given the space!

A sob broke from her. She didn’t know where it came from. A set of long fingers arrived to gently prise the phone free from her grasp. And she was trembling, Angie realised, quivering and shaking, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Take a couple of deep breaths,’ Roque advised quietly.

But Angie shook her head. She wanted to cry. Now that she had given in to it, she wanted to sob her silly aching heart out.

‘You’re suddenly his hero,’ she said, on a choke that could not make its mind up whether to be a sob or a laugh.

She’d stood between the two of them like a boxing referee, with arms outstretched to hold them apart while they’d thrown verbal punches at each other. Now, out of nowhere, they’d decided to call a truce. Why couldn’t they have tried to do it when it would have meant something to her?

Now Nadia stood between her and Roque like a smug, smiling spectre. And not just Nadia, she thought as she broke down on another sob.

She heard Roque release a sigh, then his arms came around her. There was a stiff reluctance in the way he drew her close. They were still at loggerheads, she remembered. Allowing her contact with her brother had not been done in the form of an olive branch.

‘I apologise,’ Roque said, and even that left him with distinct unwillingness. ‘I accept I should not have withheld your right to reassure yourself that your brother was okay before he flew off. But he was already in the air and I knew I could not contact him for hours. I am a ruthless bastard when I go after something,’ he ended flatly.

‘I can’t make my mind up if you’ve sent him to Brazil to make a man out of him or because you just want to put him as far away from you as you possibly can.’

‘A bit of both,’ Roque confessed with a dry slice of honesty. ‘Here—use this …’

He handed her a clean napkin off the table. Taking it from him, Angie took the hint that she’d cried enough tears and made an effort to put a stop to them. ‘It’s me who should be saying sorry,’ she mumbled into the napkin. ‘I didn’t mean to fall to pieces.’

‘If you want my opinion it is something you should have done a long time ago.’

He was probably right. For hours, days, months— years—she’d been bottling it all up without knowing she was doing it. From the age of seventeen she had lived her life by walking a narrow path wearing blinkers on her emotions, because it was the only way she had been able to cope. Survival had been everything—her survival, her brother’s survival. Constant fear had dogged her every decision. If she got it wrong and could no longer afford to keep Alex safe in his private boarding school she’d
risked him being taken away from her and placed in a state home or fostered out.

Then Roque had come along—a dangerously tempting diversion.

‘You were right,’ she sniffed into the napkin. ‘I should not have let Alex run my life for me. I should’ve listened when you offered me advice.’

‘Was that a concession?’

If it was, he didn’t sound very impressed by it.

‘It is late. I need a shower. Go to bed.’

Letting her go, he swung away from her to stride back across the bedroom, all arrogant distance and touch-me-not-with-your-concession cool.

‘You think you’re so perfect, don’t you, Roque?’ Angie flung after him shakily. ‘You think that because all your predictions about my brother have come true it gives you the right to take the lofty high ground. Well, I have news for you,’ she said as he stopped dead. ‘You were no better behaved than Alex was when it came to wanting your own way. Alex was jealous of you. What was
your
excuse for turning our marriage into a battle in which only one of you could make me dance to their tune? Which one of you was the adult?’

His shoulders flexed inside his white shirt as her final stab sank deep. ‘Poor Angie,’ he struck back. ‘Beaten into meek submission by her warring men.’

His derision washed angry colour into her cheeks, for she had never let anyone beat her into submission— especially not Roque. ‘I made mistakes,’ she admitted. How could she not admit it when she’d just stood here in the room and faced them? ‘I was a lousy wife to you—’

‘So you were,’ he agreed.

Angie sucked in a painful breath ‘Well, at least I didn’t go looking for comfort in another man’s bed!’ she hit back with shaking fervour.

Roque swung around to look at her. A sudden stark look Angie read as remorse had taken hold of his lean golden features, and her breath stalled in her throat when he opened his mouth to speak.

‘Don’t you dare apologise,’ she heaved out shakily.

Surprise made him blink. ‘I had no intention of apologising,’ he stated coolly. ‘Why would I, when you have just said that you were a lousy wife?’

Angie wanted to throw something at him. Instead she had to make do with clenching her hands into two tense fists, because he was already striding with laconic grace into his own dressing room, leaving her standing there feeling …

She didn’t know what she was feeling, she realised as she released her pent-up breath. He tied her in knots. He’d always tied her in knots. Was he expecting
her
to apologise for driving him into another woman’s bed?

A gentle knock sounding on the suite door made her hurriedly relax her taut posture before she called a polite, ‘Come in.’ The door opened and a little dark-haired maid dressed in pale blue stepped in. She smiled shyly at Angie and indicated she’d come to collect the supper things. Angie smiled back, managed to discover the maid’s name was Maria, and after thanking her wandered into the bathroom to use up some time cleaning her teeth and brushing the damp tangles out of her hair.

When she glanced into the mirror she saw a triangular face with wide-spaced green eyes, a thin little nose and a full, soft bow-shaped mouth. A mouth that
was trembling pathetically, and eyes that had darkened with hurt.

Did he truly believe he could justify what he’d done by piling the blame on to her? Obviously he did, or he would not have said it—which did not bode well for the next scene they were about the share when they climbed into that bed out there.

She turned to slump back against the washbowl, staring down dully at her bare feet, because she knew that sleep was not on Roque’s agenda this time. He’d let her off the hook last night, but there was little chance he was going to do so again. And the default charge he’d laid on her this afternoon was still stinging—because, God help her, she knew she was in danger of defaulting again.

Walking back out into the dressing room, she started hunting through drawers, looking for her nightwear. Finding the right drawer in a wide column of them, she was about to pluck out a slip nightdress when she spied another nightdress folded beneath it, and a sudden light of defiance lit her up.

Throwing off her bathrobe, she let it drop to the floor, then pulled the garment out of the drawer to shake out its voluminous folds. It was a real passion-killer—a long, loose thing that would cover her from neck to feet. It had been given to her by a lingerie company aiming to reproduce the pre-Raphaelite look for its ads. She even had a copy of the photograph in her portfolio. All the other models in the picture were wearing the very latest in sensationally sexy lingerie. However, as a contrast, she’d got to look the perfect picture of pre-Raphaelite virginal white modesty because of her flowing red hair and her ability to look pale and—

‘Angie, we need to talk—
meu Dues.’

A sharp gasp of air left Angie’s lungs as she spun around, then froze. Roque was standing in the opening which led back into the bedroom, his full attention locked onto her with the stunning power of a magnetic force field. Angie lost the ability to breathe at all—for he might be looking at her as if she’d just popped naked out of a birthday cake, but she could not take her eyes off
him.

He was wearing a towel wrapped like a sarong around his hips and nothing else. The towel might reach down to his calf muscles, but it didn’t stop him from looking mind-stoppingly physically gorgeous. His hair was still wet, and beads of moisture clung to his wide bronze muscled shoulders, the spread of hair on his chest. A slow, thick lethargy began creeping over her. There was no way to avoid admitting it. Looking at Roque meant looking at pure male perfection, with a horrendous amount of raw sexual promise thrown in. Her eyes felt glued to the long, sleek form of his very masculine torso, bearing the kind of muscular ridges that ignited a series of familiar stings and prickles which attacked low down in her abdomen and at the very tips of her breasts. It didn’t help that she knew him, every fabulous lean, dark, intimate inch of him, knew exactly what was hidden beneath the towel and what—

‘Meu Dues,’
he said again. ‘I am revisiting my perfect moment.’

Angie blinked, then jerked her eyes back to his face. Roque watched as a blush started crawling across her skin as his meaning struck home. Seeing her naked for the first time was a moment he would treasure for the rest of his life. Her shy blushing cheeks, the soft quiver
of her mouth, the rippling waves of her hair falling around her face and her shoulders, the smooth flowing lines of all that amazing pearlescent skin. The way she’d stood in front of him, with her thighs pressed anxiously together and her arms crossed over her body in a manner supposed to be hiding her breasts from him. But the two perfect globes had pouted at him over the top of her inadequate cover-up.

Back then he’d felt like the rake in some costume melodrama, about to deflower the pale trembling virgin, and he’d loved it. His Portuguese blood had fired up centuries of alpha genes which he really should have been ashamed to acknowledge he had. If his great-great grandfather had been alive to witness such primitive rushes he would have been pleased. Drogo de Calvhos had been a sixty-four-year-old lech and a childless widower when he’d married the sixteen-year-old daughter of a
duc,
sold to him for the price of some disputed land bordering their two estates. Fable had it that his teenage bride had put a scar on his face, trying to fight him off on her wedding night, and his ancestor had had her whipped for her trouble. She’d given him three sons before she’d reached her twentieth birthday, and each conception had added another scar to Drogo’s face.

‘Go away,’ gasped Angie, casting the nightdress aside in favour of stooping down to snatch up her discarded bathrobe.

For some reason he could not fathom, Roque lifted a hand to lightly stroke the side of his cheek. Perhaps it was those genes at work again, warning him that he could receive the same treatment as his ancestor if he did not tread carefully around Angie right now. He might be only thirty-two years old, not sixty-four, and this woman
a now very experienced twenty-three, but the vibes were still there—the
touch me if you dare
warning buzzing in the space separating them.